


One Word (From You)

by ithinkyourewonderful



Series: Home With You [2]
Category: Ratched (TV)
Genre: DEEP SIGH, F/F, these two...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:28:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29579589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ithinkyourewonderful/pseuds/ithinkyourewonderful
Summary: ""Come inside Mildred,” She wants to say, ‘Let’s go to bed,’ and ‘Let me take care of you,’, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t know how without scaring Mildred off so she holds it all in, beneath her skin, burrowed deep in her breast. She will hold anything and everything to keep it from burdening Mildred, from anything hurting her any more than the world already has."(Otherwise known as what happens the first time Mildred leaves Gwen for work after the excitement of their first kiss and the swell of music dies down and it's two very different women left to figure out how to be together)
Relationships: Gwendolyn Briggs/Mildred Ratched
Series: Home With You [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016083
Comments: 11
Kudos: 74





	One Word (From You)

**Author's Note:**

> **a:** Apparently I’m incapable of leaving these two alone. *deep sigh*. A short one-off, set a few days after _‘Something Sweet’_ and a bit before _‘In the Night’_ (so, between 1.07 and 1.08) and 20 years before ‘Nothing More’ I suppose. You absolutely do not need to read any of those or know anything special about them.  
>  **b:** tw/cw for some internalized loathing and/or mild internalized homophobia? Not sure of the appropriate one, but basically it’s Mildred being Mildred, questioning why and how Gwen can want and love her after seeing her (because perceived is the true horror : ) and Gwen having era-appropriate levels of confusion. IDK. A single instance of a vulgar word, and some general allusions to a sexual situation.

* * *

The roads are slick and black as if coated with oil, and Mildred is half thankful that it’s so late that the highway is empty and half terrified that if she crashes on the rain-soaked asphalt, no one will ever know. She would never get to see Gwen again.The thought focuses her. She snaps on the radio, rolls the windows down, concentrates on the drive ahead. Soon she’ll be back to Gwen, and then what?  
  
A chill passes at the question.  
  
Three days ago, Mildred made her way to Gwen’s house, confessed her love, and fell into the other woman’s embrace, the other woman’s bed. For three days, they were no more than a room, an arm’s length apart. More frequently, they were curled into each other’s side, a limb wrapped around a waist, a head nestled in the slope between neck and shoulder, between the valleys of breasts, the sweet space between thi-  
  
Mildred takes the exit and rolls into the intersection. She has to focus, she’s only done this drive twice before, and never at night, never this tired. The roads are now puddled with orange streetlights, but still gleaming, still slick. She mutters the directions to herself as she waits for the light to turn green: “Left, straight for three blocks, right, straight for two, right, straight for six, pass the grocery store -” She makes the first turn, and then continues, “Left, straight for four - on the right.” Her nerves begin to gnaw at her from inside, and it’s not **_just_** about the directions. She shouldn’t have left Gwen. She didn’t have to, not really, did she? She no longer needed her job - she makes the second turn - not with Ms, Osgoode’s money. She could’ve quit. Or she could’ve called and said she was sick with strep, with the flu, with anything, so long as she could stay beside Gwen, safe and sound, wrapped up in the smell of soap and shampoo and even sex. She blushes in the dark and almost misses the third turn, distracted at the thought.  
  
She really is exhausted, too tired to be driving so late and so far. She already doesn’t sleep well, and Gwen’s house is entirely too quiet for her to get any real rest. She misses the sound of the ocean, of neighbours through thin walls, of traffic.  
  
She passes the Ralph’s grocery store where she went in with Gwen the other day to pick up odds and ends. She hated it, not be able to touch her, look at her with anything other than casual disinterest. She pressed Gwen up against the kitchen cabinets immediately after they returned home, aching for reassurance that she still wanted her, that the distance and indifference was an act constructed for others.  
  
Another turn.  
  
She wants to sleep, and she wants to stay awake with Gwen. She worries the other woman won’t understand, that she won’t be able to explain herself properly. How can she, she wonders, slowing the car down as she approaches Gwen’s house when she doesn’t understand the contradiction herself? She pulls into the driveway and turns off the car. She’s just **_so tired_** \- drained, not just from work, but from Gwen. Her head and her body were still reeling from feeling nothing to **_everything_** all at once, in a matter of days. It’s sensory overload and it never **_stops_**. It’s like war, no amount of preparation can ready you for the actuality - the smell of mud and burning flesh and blood and sounds, always **_sounds_**. It’s awful to think, but being in love with Gwen is as all-consuming as war was. As violent and as confusing and exhilarating.  
  
She looks up at the house, mostly dark but with the living room light on, and wonders if Gwen is waiting up for her. If Gwen expects her to cook? If Gwen expects her to talk?  
  
What if Gwen doesn’t want her here at all?  
  
What if the lights are mostly off because she wasn’t expecting Mildred, doesn’t want her back, tonight or… She presses her lips together, replays and inspects every moment of this morning - did she misread or misinterpret it? She remembers Gwen sitting on the bed, distracting her by watching her get ready. Even now, hours later in the car with the cool air coming in from the windows, she grows warm, remembering the way Gwen’s eyes made their way up her legs as she tugged up her stockings. She knew it should make her uncomfortable (being looked at like that always did), but it didn’t, or at least not in a bad way. The next thing she recalls, Gwen had wrapped herself around her from behind, and Mildred’s heart raced at the delicious and illicit feeling of the other woman, fully dressed, against her half-dressed form. She shivered against Gwen, even though she wasn’t cold, hating herself for doing so, for responding to her. She remembered Gwen’s tongue at her ear, her neck (careful not to mark her where anyone would see), she remembers one hand pressed against her belly, the other tracing the straps holding her stockings up. Mildred remembered her own half-humiliation as she panted for the other woman. How could Gwen want to see her again, love her, after she had been incoherently begging for her hand to fill her? She hadn’t even bothered to get to the bed, to get under the covers, half-dressed in front of the vanity like some sort of desperate - the words she had said keep circling around in her head, begging Gwen like she was in heat. She didn’t care what she sounded like, what she looked like so long as Gwen fucked her at that moment.  
  
There was a terror that clung to the rough edges of Mildred, she’s sure Gwen can feel it, can smell it. Desperation. She hasn’t been desperate for so long, and never for **_someone_** , not like this, not with every square inch of her body wordlessly crying out ‘ ** _Want me, want me, want me like I want you,_** ’. But Gwen loves her, wants her, meets and matches her desires not with words but with actions. All weekend long, even that morning, that day, Mildred took comfort in the emotions exchanged during those actions, but now alone in the dark, all she can do is review them over and over and over from every angle to see what and how they could’ve been misread.  
  
In the car, she swallows hard, squeezing her thighs together at the thought of wanting, of being wanted, not in the abstract, but very specifically. She wants Gwen and she wants to be wanted by Gwen. She also cannot imagine how Gwen would have reacted to her desires this morning.  
  
She should leave.  
  
She **_can_** leave, she can turn her car around and go back to the motel, she can go back to being the Mildred Ratched she knows. She doesn’t have to stay here, she doesn’t have to be this woman, undone and possessed by Gwen’s touch, Gwen’s gaze. She doesn’t recognize herself when she’s with Gwen, doesn’t want to. She wants to be baptized as this new woman who exists within her - at times it feels as if she’s two beings in one body. One is the Mildred the world knows and sees, and the other is the ‘Darling girl’ that blooms under Gwen’s loving attention, who begs her to take her in the kitchen after grocery shopping, in the living room during the evening news, in the morning getting ready for work.  
  
Her entire body was red against her white undergarments. She recalls that much from this morning. She remembers straightening up once they were done, twisting and turning in the mirror, taking in the fading bruises and bites and scratches along her skin, strategically placed souvenirs from their previous entanglements. Her flesh was as tender as a peach, Gwen noted their first morning, running a hand over them, promising to be more careful. Mildred doesn’t understand why that fills her with an unfathomable and unspeakable disappointment. Looking at herself in the mirror, she had wished Gwen had left another mark, something for her to hold on to during the day. Gwen kissed her shoulder before heading to the washroom, leaving Mildred to finish getting dressed. Mildred’s heart beat erratically at being apart. How would she be able to handle being in a completely different town if she reacted like this at being in a separate room? She should be sick of the other woman, tired of her proximity, her constant presence, and in a way, she is, but the idea of being away from her made her ill, feverish. “Are you ok?” Gwen had asked, watching her as she buttoned up her uniform.  
“Mmmm.”  
“Will I…” Gwen’s voice died off and Mildred’s eyes snapped up, looking at Gwen in the mirror’s reflection.  
“Will you?”  
“Will I see you tonight?” Fear was evident in Gwen’s features, her voice.  
“Would you like to?” Mildred finished her buttons, adjusted her belt.  
“Yes,” Gwen nodded, “I do. But I know your place is closer to the hospital. I can meet you th-”  
“No!”  
“Oh, all right then.”  
“I mean,” Mildred sighed, she always means something else. Everything felt a little raw, exposed, in the aftermath of what has just happened between them, the transition between Mildred and the ‘Darling girl’ she becomes for and with Gwendolyn. “I don’t want you anywhere near Louise.” She paused, “I wouldn’t get here until 1:30. I’d wake you.”  
“Wake me,” Gwen said, her tone unreadable to Mildred. “Or I can give you the spare key if you’d like?” Gwen offered, moving towards Mildred, and then past her to the vanity where she began to root around for something.  
“Gwen, I don’t want you to ask me out of obligation.”  
“And I don’t want you to come out of politeness.”  
  
An impasse.  
  
“Here,” Gwen held out her palm, something small and glittering resting in it.  
“Hmm?”  
“Some earrings to borrow while I look for your pearl one this morning,” They both blushed at the memory of where and how the pearl one was lost.  
“Thank you,” Mildred smiled, kissed her on the cheek before she took the earrings and hooked them on. She should say no, but there was something about the weight of them that grounded her, comforted her. A little piece of Gwen that she could carry with her without anyone knowing, or suspecting.  
  
Together, they headed downstairs, where Gwen had placed a paper bag with Mildred’s lunch in it. Mildred’s heart dropped. Or soared. She couldn’t tell which. Either way, something happened inside her at the realization that no one had ever made her lunch, no one had taken the time. She didn’t speak.  
  
Couldn’t.  
  
She couldn’t do anything other than swallow hard, set her lips, focused on not crying. “I love you, Mildred,” Gwen told her, matter of factly as she held her gaze for a moment or two before she handed over a single key with a wink and a “Just in case,”. Mildred simply nodded, too embarrassed, too overwhelmed to do or say anything else. And then the moment passed and Gwen opened the door, andMildred leaves.   
  
Childishly, Mildred wished she would’ve lingered at the door, watch her get in the car and drive off, but Gwen doesn’t. They’d already discussed what their external behaviour needs to be, especially after their trip to Ralph’s, where Mildred was introduced to a few forgettable neighbours as a friend staying with her while Trevor was travelling for work.  
  
It was a relief to leave Gwen that morning. To be on her own. To have her head clear from the madness that fell over them for three days. It was madness, wasn’t it? It could be nothing else. Still, as she drove to work, she found herself missing her. Another sign of madness, of poor mental health and hygiene. How else could she explain it? Gwen had called it something, but the name escapes her, holding two opposing thoughts. Being with Gwen felt overwhelming - it was much too much love and pain and discomfort, but being away from her, even if it was just down the grocery aisle, down the street also ached to her core. How could that be? She wants to be with her always, all the time. It’s unfathomable to be away from her and yet she is, she can breathe, she can think, but all her thoughts turn back to Gwen. It’s an obsession, an infinite loop.  
  
And now that she’s back in her driveway, the day complete, she cannot bring herself to get out, no matter how much she wants to. And she does, so badly, want to get out of the car, go in, slip into the bed and just breathe in the air that only seemed to exist between their skin, beneath their blankets. But what if…? What if Gwen didn’t really want her anymore? After she saw her as she did that morning? Realized she was more broken, more trouble than she was worth? What if in being alone for the day, she thought about all the awful things Mildred did, and would do again? She looks up at the house again. She doesn’t belong here, in a nice house like this, with a nice woman like Gwen.  
  
Gwen had told her that she reminded her of an Edward Hopper painting one morning.  
  
Mildred was embarrassed, angry at herself for not knowing what that meant, or if it was a compliment or not. What if he was like those paintings with the nose off to one side, and an ear in the centre of their face? Later that weekend, as Gwen napped, Mildred wrapped a robe around herself and scurried away into the study. She’s wasn’t sure where to begin, but stumbled on a stack of magazines in the lower shelves - law, travel, culture - the embarrassment washed over her again, but she continued her search. She sorted through the piles, organized by subject, publication and date and lands on Art in America. She flipped, flipped, flipped through pages and issues, looking for Hopper, Hopper, Hopper until she found it. **_Edward Hopper. American. Realist painter_** (whatever that means). She settled herself on the small couch and began to pour over the pictures  
  
They’re beautiful, but God, they’re all so **_lonely_**.  
  
She liked the ones with the windows the best. Her fingers ghosting over pages carefully. Someone making a bed. A building with the shades drawn. A woman sitting alone at a table, ' ** _Automat, 1927_** ’ the tiny print under the picture said. A woman sitting on the edge of a bed reading, another sitting, her back to Mildred, looking out a window. There are some of nature, trees and trains and gas pumps, but she didn’t care for them. It’s the one with the women that twisted within her. ‘ ** _New York Movie, 1939_** ’, it said, with an usherette leaning against a wall. Why had Gwen said she reminded her of them? She had nothing in common with these women, solitary and beautiful. There’s that feeling again - these two separate and competing thoughts: fury at Gwen for thinking she was anything like these women but also some wordless emotion at looking at them. Their skin and their beings radiating aloneness. She is nothing like these women, she repeated to herself, nothing nothing nothing. She stared at their limbs and their windows and their emptiness. She learned the names of the paintings, the dates, repeated them to herself over and over again until she heard Gwen stirring.  
  
Mildred blinks and she’s back in the car, back in Gwen’s driveway, staring out at Gwen’s windows. ‘ ** _Night Windows, 1928_** ’, she thinks to herself, even though it looks nothing like it.  
  
She hopes Gwen has finished unpacking. She didn’t like seeing the boxes and suitcases in the corners of rooms.  
  
It was untidy.  
  
She wants to go inside. She doesn’t want to look at the pictures, look at others (look at Gwen) from the outside. She wants to go inside **_to_** Gwen. She was starved of her and has come back, parched and eager, but uncertain. She was sick with want of the other woman. It churns her stomach, not because she was a woman, but because she wanted, she needed. Both were dangerous for someone like herself. A man dying of thirst could gorge himself on water and would die. All she wants is to be beside the other woman, be touched by her, her hands so much softer than Mildred’s, rubbed raw from the hospital. She used to go days and weeks without thinking of Gwen, went a whole lifetime without it. Now she can only think about her eyes, her small smile, her curls hanging down her back. The base of her skull, where it met the spine, the atlas and the axis. She loves that the most, she thinks. Her fingers always floated up to it, tapping the ridges of the vertebrae, naming them off silently to herself. It always smelled of shampoo there, and perfume and start and sweat - her heart slows and steadies when she buries her face there. She wants to live forever, grow old and die there. Different from how she had wanted to die before, alone and scared and angry. Though she is scared, and she is so, so angry at Gwen for breaking her open like this. Livid even. She wishes she had never set eyes on Gwendolyn Briggs, had never looked up in that operating room, never went for a drive with her, never - she doesn’t know what else she wishes. After their kiss, all the songs made sense, and that confused her more than when they didn’t. The movies too. Now she knows why men would commit murder for Barbara Stanwyck. She would kill for Gwendolyn, how could she not?  
  
None of this makes sense. Her mind, usually orderly and methodical, works itself into circles until it’s all knotted and tangled, an unholy mess of pain and desire and rage.  
  
Love was supposed to make you happy, wasn’t it? She loves Gwen, but this happiness was bittersweet, it hurt, like glass in her veins. In loving Gwen, she can see what she’s missed, her whole life spent in a state of lack and now she can have her fill. God, could anyone have their fill of Gwen? Of wanting and being wanted? Did she even know how to take? How to give? What could she give if she could? If she knew how? All she ever knew was how to survive, but her survival has a body count. A wake of people who she’s hurt and betrayed to make it here. Gwen’s already been hurt by her once, shot, and betrayed, and more than a little gun shy. She sees it in the way she looks at her, as if she’s a wounded animal, liable to lash out at any moment, and she hates it. She hates when Gwen looks at her like that. She hates that Gwen **_has_** to look at her like that because she **_is_** an animal, instinct drives her to strike first at any potential danger. She knows Gwen understands (as much as she can) but she hates it, she hates it so much and that spills out onto Gwen. She hates that Gwen - She stops herself, inhaling deeply. It’s not the ocean breeze like at the motel, but it’s clean, the evening’s rain releasing the scent of roses from the yard, peaches from the neighbour’s tree, wet sod in the air. As a child, she could never imagine anything like this. Even as an adult, she could never imagine being loved, could never imagine Gwendolyn Briggs. Gwen who… is opening the front door, closing it behind her gently, and then making her way down the walk to the car.  
  
“Hi,” She greets her from the open passenger side window, “Mind if I join you?”  
Mildred nods, blushes, as Gwen gets in beside her, turns to her. “You shouldn’t be out in this weather,” She chastises, unable to help herself.  
“Why not? It’s beautiful out, isn’t it?” She doesn’t point out Mildred’s out here, at least not with her words, the smirk on her face is another matter entirely. “Have a good day?” She asks cheerful and cautious.  
“Long. I never seemed to mind before.”  
“No? I wonder what’s changed?”  
“That smug grin doesn’t suit you, Gwendolyn,” She replies, lying. Everything suits her, even the robe wrapped tightly around her. “Your hair’s down.”  
“Oh, yeah.” She tries to shrug it off, her blush betraying her efforts at being casual.  
“How was your day?” Mildred asks, curious, and eager to deflect the conversation away from her.  
“Oh, you know.”  
“I don’t.”  
“Well, I found your pearl earning, so that’s something.” She pauses, “It’s different, being home. Not working.”  
“Gwen I’m -”  
“Don’t, Mildred. This isn’t about that. This is just how things are for right now and I am,” She takes a breath, “Going to have to accept that. Accept that it’s for the best. It’s not all bad. I have someone to cook for.” It sounds awkward to both of them.  
“You cooked for me?”  
“And cleaned. Fresh sheets.”  
“You didn’t have to,” Mildred responds, looking straight ahead, an edge in her voice. She doesn’t know what Gwen means by this. She doesn’t know what she wants from Mildred.  
“Wanted to,” Gwen explains, taking Mildred’s hand in hers. “Besides, dinner is light, so don’t get your hopes up, we’re reaching the end of my repertoire. I’ll have to get a cookbook soon to try something new.” She schools her voice into a practiced air of nonchalance, gentle teasing.  
  
She doesn’t tell Mildred how completely unaccustomed she is to having someone to cook for, clean for when Trevor did the bulk of it before. She doesn’t tell her that all day long she wondered if this is what normal women did, what wives did? Wait anxiously for their loved ones to come home, come back to them? How wonderful it is and how awful. She doesn’t tell Mildred she spent all day thinking about not thinking about if Mildred would come back if she’d ever see her again. She doesn’t say a word about watching the drive for Mildred’s car, watching her sit there for the last twenty minutes. No, she doesn’t say any of these thoughts, she simply buries them down, runs her thumb over the hardened skin on Mildred’s knuckles. It always surprises her (though she knows it shouldn’t), that they’re so rough. She should get some cream for her the next time she’s at I. Magnin’s. “Want to come in?” She asks.  
“I want to kiss you,” Mildred responds, matter of factly, eyes still dead ahead.  
“You can do that.”  
“You don’t understand.”  
“Wanting to kiss me? I think I do. I’m pretty adorable if I do say so myself,” She jokes.  
“Gwennnn,” Mildred sighs, finally looking at the other woman. She remembers the last time they were in a car, in the dark, at night. Gwen was lit up by the neon of the hotel, the car was hazy with cigarette smoke. Mr. Wainwright’s death was between them then. Now it’s only their own unspoken worries.  
“Come inside Mildred,” She wants to say, ‘ ** _Let’s go to bed_** ,’ and ‘ ** _Let me take care of you_** ,’, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t know how without scaring Mildred off so she holds it all in, beneath her skin, burrowed deep in her breast. She will hold anything and everything to keep it from burdening Mildred, from anything hurting her any more than the world already has. “Come **_home_**.”  
“Home?” Mildred’s never had a home before. She’s never had someone who stays up late for her and cooked for her. But then again, she’s never had a Gwen before.  
“Home,” Gwen repeats.

**Author's Note:**

>  **c:** Some tense jumping between present and past. I did my best to make it clear, but please lmk if it didn’t work/was too confusing.  
>  **d:** Continuing the trend from _‘Something Sweet’_ and _‘In the Night’_ , the title is a Mitski reference.  
>  **e:** Ok, so I’m fully aware of Picasso's African Period (and origins) but I’m going to make a guess that Mildred is not, so her passing comment is not intended to demean it, but express she doesn’t understand the style used.


End file.
